One World - Protecting the most significant buildings, monuments and features of Valletta (70)

The original design of the Camarata was meant to be a nine-storey edifice with 23 apartments on each storey, housing 828 individuals. In 1862 only five of the nine storeys containing apartments were constructed.

The importance of this building arises from the considerations for highly improved sanitary and social conditions incorporated in its design as one of the earliest housing projects.

It is planned around a large central courtyard with a staircase located on one side of this courtyard. Damp is reduced through the use of Coralline limestone for the lower courses, a ventilated basement and double leaf external walls with an intermediate air cavity. Above the first four Coralline limestone courses, the building is constructed using Globigerina limestone blocks cut in an experimental smaller size than that normally used in Malta for easier and safer handling by workmen.

Aesthetically, the building is quite bare with large plain rectangular windows on the upper floors, and semi-circular arched windows at ground floor level.

A heavy cornice crowns the edifice above which is a plain roof parapet wall.

On the site of the Camarata there was originally a building which served as a retreat house for the Knights set up by the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Carminata in 1593. The Jesuits built a house for private spiritual retreats for the knights near the hospital at the end of Valletta.

Mepa scheduled the Camarata as a Grade 2 building as per Government Notice number 276/08 in the Government Gazette dated March 28.